A Lady's Dream Come True - Grace Burrowes Page 0,100
to her face or her person, and he’d been a loyal correspondent since Dirk’s death.
He admitted her into an elegant parlor, one so lavishly adorned in gilt-framed art that Vera felt as if she were at an exhibition rather than in a private home. Stern men in dark clothing, pretty ladies in elaborate brocades, bucolic landscapes, and the occasional storm-tossed sloop covered the walls, each frame nearly touching the ones beside, above, and below it.
The furniture was fussy as only relics of the last century could be. The harpsichord looked to be of Italian extraction, with elaborate carving on the side panels. The underside of the raised lid depicted some goddess or other reclining on billowy clouds, while winged cherubs flitted above her, strumming gilt lyres.
The music was open to a Scarlatti sonata, the notes as dense on the page as the bric-a-brac was on Longacre’s sideboard and shelves. Snuffboxes, scent bottles, puzzle boxes, porcelain figurines, miniatures… a whole curiosity cabinet was devoted to porcelain pipes.
To a more educated eye, Longacre’s public parlor might be a jewel box in miniature.
Vera hated it for the ostentation alone. A single jeweled and enameled snuffbox was an elegant touch, a dozen was surely ridiculous.
“Shall I ring for tea?” Longacre asked, closing the parlor door. “I am overjoyed to see you in the capital at last, and I must say you are in great good looks.”
His perusal of her was a little too obvious for Vera’s liking, but then, Longacre was an artist, albeit retired, and they had not seen each other for several years.
“Thank you, and tea would be appreciated. You have quite a lot of art here.” She offered that observation, because clearly Longacre was proud of this collection.
“My little acquisitions give me great joy,” he said, tugging a bell-pull. “What do you suppose Dirk would make of these treasures?”
Vera had no idea what Dirk would have made of them. Oak would find the crowding alone appalling.
“Dirk never called upon you here?”
“Alas, no. Do you miss him?”
A friend might ask that question, though Longacre wasn’t quite a friend. “Of course. Time helps, but Dirk was my husband, and he was still very much in his prime. Your note mentioned a painting you wished to show me.” She injected a note of cheerful curiosity into her voice, though the change of subject was nearly rude.
Vera wished she’d waited until Oak could have joined her on this visit. Something about Longacre was off, just as his recommendations for staff for Vera’s nursery had proved to be off.
“Has London brought back old memories, Vera?” Longacre asked, rearranging his snuffboxes one by one.
“Not many. I am content with my life in Hampshire, and I am much concerned with raising my children and running Merlin Hall.” About that painting?
The tea tray arrived, and Longacre asked her to pour out. She obliged, though the point of the exercise was apparently to show off Longacre’s elaborately decorated antique Meissen service.
When the requisite two cups of a pedestrian gunpowder had been consumed, Longacre rose.
“And now, my dear, if you’d accompany me to the library, I have something to show you.” His tone was cordial, but something about the look in his eyes—assessing rather than inviting—made Vera’s skin prickle. This painting was apparently the point of the visit, and thus she allowed Longacre to escort her down the carpeted corridor to another elaborately decorated chamber.
The library’s oak wainscoting was carved with leaves and fruit worthy of a drunken apprentice of Grinling Gibbons; the ceiling sported an entire toga-clad pantheon apparently involved in a stag hunt. The manic quality of the composition suggested the artist had tried to imitate the great Antonio Verrio—tried and failed.
Perhaps Longacre had had a reason for not inviting Dirk to his home.
“Our masterpiece is this way,” Longacre said after he’d closed the door. “An exceptional work, exquisite really, and one I’m sure the artist was very proud of.”
An easel sat in the far interior corner of the library, where direct sunlight could not reach the painting. Vera approached, prepared to make complimentary noises about some old master’s use of light and perspective and whatever.
She stopped six feet away from the abomination propped on the easel.
“I never posed for that,” she said, heart hammering against her ribs. “I would never… Where did you get this?”
The woman depicted in the painting was Vera, right down to the exact shade of her hair and the exact curve of her jaw. She wore nothing, not even a quilt draped over one